Public Relations (PR) and SEO, although vastly different in many ways, can actually have a lot in common. When both of these practices are incorporated in a law firm’s marketing efforts, a lot can be achieved.

The main idea is that PR and SEO are both a form of optimized communication in that they must be intricately tailored for a specific audience.

Although PR involves maintaining the law firm’s brand image through public events and appearances, and SEO involves marketing a company over the Internet, there's synergy that can be created when both are merged.

In this article we highlight five ideas to leverage PR for your law firm's SEO campaign.

1. Use PR Resources for Optimized Content

Create optimized web copy and other forms of inbound marketing content (for SEO) by utilizing offline resources created by the PR department. It's important to ensure that the proper focus and purpose of the PR content is similar in its application for SEO. A lot of insights can be gained by leveraging PR content for SEO, so get creative and see what applies.

2. Leverage Relevant Contacts for Off-site SEO

A law firm's PR department establishes a lot of contacts with potential SEO clients since they work with media and other forms of marketing. Utilize the PR department to reach out to prospects and see if your firm can utilize their web properties for off-site SEO, such as guest blogging and relevant link building.

3. Utilize Offline Press Releases for Online SEO

When it comes to press release, the PR department for most law firms is responsible for generating this type of content. These press releases can easily be spun or re-purposed, and optimized for inbound marketing and SEO. It's a great way to make use of internal resources that already exist.

4. Get Social Marketing Insights from the PR Department

The PR department of the law firm can come in handy in generating insights and quality content to share on social media. This is due to the fact that PR deals with the public and established connections with the press. As a result, it's likely that the firm's PR department will have good information and content that can be used for social media (which now contributes heavily for SEO, especially local SEO.)

5. Apply Data from PR for SEO

Data that's gathered from the PR department can be used for many different marketing function, especially fro SEO. For instance, target audience data, specifically demographics and other specifics of the law firm's target market can be used to produce more relevant content for SEO.

Is you firm leveraging public relations for its SEO efforts? We like to hear your insights!

Small and large businesses have realized that engaging in social media is one of the most effective ways of understanding their customer. Once a company builds a social media network, it is important for it to make use of the information generated from this source on a daily basis. There is a lot of valuable information, which is obtained as feedback from customers via social media.

As a business, you must learn how to collect this information from your customers and use it to improve your products and services. It is easy for a company to establish a social media following but the unfortunate thing is that, most people do not maximize the feedback obtained from social media. According to Joshua March, the CEO and co-founder of Conversocial, only 6 percent of businesses that engage in social media utilize their customer feedback data.

According to March, you can be able to tell how people perceive your products by using the feedback data generated in social media. Most customers will give a genuine description of your product or service based on their opinion. There are some who are flattered by brand loyalty whereas others may have a bad image regarding your product due to a certain marketing message they have come across.

In essence, if you want to understand how your brand is perceived by its target customers then you should collect customer feedback data from social media. You need to understand the negative preconceptions about your brand so that you can address them accordingly. With social media, you can identify the effectiveness of your web presence strategy by identifying the product’s natural strengths and the negative perceptions.

Other than that, social media engagement also helps you to analyze your customer’s reaction to a new product. You can know how your product is faring in a matter of minutes since people give feedback on social platforms really fast. You will be able to know if customers are disappointed or satisfied by the new product depending on the kind of feedback that is generated on social media. You can take the right action to clear information about this new product by giving the right response and addressing disappointments using the same social platform.

According to March, if companies can create a clear plan on how to address social media feedback, then a lot can be achieved. For instance, you can decide to separate the customer feedbacks into different categories then addressing each separately. From there, you can know who is responsible for a certain negative reaction and how this can be addressed. You can also leverage a number of other initiatives, such as promoting job opportunities, local events, or press release forms of content via social media.

In essence, you should engage in social media to help you understand your customers better. Make a point of using any information or data that is given by customers on social media to engage with customers. This customer feedback can help you address issues and incorporate changes, which were recommended by your loyal customers. You can even understand the trends in your company and watch out before losing your loyal customers.

According to Pricing Engine, advertising on Bing is "more efficient" compared to Google AdWords. This is big news for law firm search marketers, for this new data directly focuses on small to medium sized businesses (or SMBs).

It is a fact that Google has huge volume of searches, but when it comes to the overall average cost per click (CPC) Bing is much lower based on the analysis of Pricing Engine. Pricing Engine examined the data coming from several small business accounts. They discovered that although Google has slightly higher CTR (click through rate) average, the CPC's are much lower for Bing advertisers.

Bing "More Efficient" for SMBs?

Pricing Engine recognized that Bing is "more efficient" for SMBs. Although bigger companies may require the higher volume of searches on Google but SMBs does not need that kind of scale. Pricing Engine is helping small businesses in how they can effectively buy online ads. They compare data from their clients and present a report at the Street Fight Summit in New York. This data is very significant to their business since they will have the capacity to analyze the performance of PPC advertisers in relations to the companies. After examining this data they can provide some recommendations.

Jeremy Kagan, the CEO of Pricing Engine, revealed that this is the first time that they have shared the information regarding extensive trends. This data may not be statistically severe however his main objective it to start a discussion regarding the VSB or the very small businesses.

One of the major points of the report is that most small businesses put more focus on advertising on Google AdWords rather than using Bing. According to Pricing Engine, AdWords advertisers have an average rate of 2.4% on their clickthrough and 2.3% only for Bing. However, the cost of clicks on Bing is lower compared to Google AdWords. The cost per click of Bing is $1.10 compared to $2.40 for Google AdWords.

Pricing Engine also discovered the largest category based on the number of accounts is the stores. On the other hand, the greatest investors on Google AdWords are the digital services companies and ecommerce store PPC advertisers.

So, is your law firm doing any sort of PPC advertising on Bing? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below!